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EPISODE REVIEW: The 100: “The Calm” (Episode 11)

Wednesday, May 28, 2014 - 22:21

Kevin Long

Despite this show consistently improving, I find I’m never in the mood to review it. I don’t know why that is. Anyway, here we go:

ON THE ARK

It’s been several days since The Exodus Ship left, crippling the station. The power finally comes back on. Kane finds himself all alone. He wanders around, and finds some other survivors. They rescue the remaining crew in the control room, and then Kane crawls through a dangerous Jeffries tube to rescue some other survivors who ‘hunkered down and got lucky’ in the service bays. Among them is Clark’s mom.

ON THE GROUND

It’s been several days since The Exodus Ship crashed and the bomb took out the bridge in the previous episode. They’ve realized something is seriously wrong with the station, and it may have been destroyed. They’ve salvaged all they can from the wreckage of The Exodus Ship, but they’re mostly out of bullets and gunpowder. Murphy is still back living with the 100, and a mysterious fire breaks out in the smoker shack while they’re preparing food for the winter. All their meat burns. Bellamy sends out hunting parties.

Raven, meanwhile, is taking the breakup hard and decides to run away. Bellamy talks her out of it, saying they need her to pull some new solution out of her ass. She comes up with the idea of walkie talkies, and they start salvaging everything they can – including the Exodus Ship Flight Recorder – to make a couple sets of ‘em.

While out hunting, Finn and Clark are captured by the Grounders. They’re taken to the Grounder Queen, who looks slightly less freaky this week, and told that if they can’t cure a sick little girl who was injured in the bomb blast at the bridge, she’ll kill Finn. Tedious story short: they fail. They’re separated. Clark flat-out cold-blooded murders her Grounder guard with a scalpel, and then runs.

Raven tells Bellamy that she’s never been with anyone but Finn, and insists they have sex. Bellamy says, “Look, if you’re hoping someone’s going to talk you down, or tell you you’re overreacting, or not thinking clearly, I’m not that guy.” She says good, and they do it. Afterwards, she gets up and starts to leave. “Did that help?” He asks. “No,” she says.

Once all the hunting parties are back, they realize Clarke and Finn are missing, and they all go out looking for ‘em with the new walkie talkies. Monty sees something which shocks him, and hears a sound “Like the one that was on the flight recorder” and then somehow disappears. Unable to find him, and it getting dark, the rest of the search party heads back to camp.

Clark runs right into a snare and ends up unconscious hanging from a tree.

The End

OBSERVATIONS

It is entirely possible that Finn is dead.

This was, on the whole, a pretty disposable episode, and the weakest one in quite a while. It really only had two good scenes – Clark’s disturbing murder (The second for her), and Raven’s “No” line – and served only as filler before the season finale. The stuff on the Ark was essentially filler within filler.

How in the hell is Clark’s mom supposed to have gotten in the storage bay? We SAW HER IN the exodus ship as it was leaving.

So what caused the exodus ship to crash? What is generating that signal? What did Monty see?

I’m assuming the charismatic new crewman that Kane rescued is a new cast member, or will be next year. And, hey, has Kane become an unexpectedly cool character or what? He was totally painted as the bad guy at the start, and he’s easily the most noble man on the station now.

BAD SCIENCE ALERT: We see the largely-wrecked station from outside several times, and it is very clear that no sections of it are still rotating. However, inside we have gravity the same as we ever did. Also, people keep referring to the station as a “Ship” on at least two occasions and talk about fuel tanks in a way that suggests the writers weren’t quite sure what the difference between a ship and a station are. (Yeah, yeah, I know: there’s plenty of reasons a big space station could have fuel tanks. That’s not my point: The overall context and tone indicates confusion on the part of the authors)

We’re told that at least 1500 people died in the disaster, and that there are “No more than a thousand people left” on the Ark. Which at least solves that pesky “There’s not enough ships to evacuate everyone” problem from a couple weeks ago.

Next week: Enough spinning our wheels, it’ll be part 1 of the 2-part season finale.

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Kevin Long is a very, very sleepy, yet well-reviewed Science Fiction author, who’s wife is out of the hospital and apparently doing fine. His fourth book came out just recently, and is called “The Bones of an Angel.” He’s got medical bills to pay, and he certainly wouldn’t object to you buying a cop if it for $1.99, you know, should you feel generous or whatever. You can find copies here https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/433927 and here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K348VGI ) He’s also written three full-length anthologies. His personal website is here and his Smashwords page is here. Or, if you prefer Amazon, his older books are here, here, and here. Finally, he’s recently given in to peer pressure, and has a facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100008371740774

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